Literature and Censorship: v. 46 (Essays and Studies) - Tapa dura

The impact of censorship practices upon literary production has always been a major cause of discussion. This collection of essays takes the best of recent approaches and adds some material in a series of investigations. Several essays explore official censorship - from government action against protest literature in the 1790s to interference in BBC screening. The objection that literary criticism does not explore the actual mechanisms of censorship is rebutted in discussions of literary language which attempted to circumvent censorship in the very battlefield of probibition (the law courts), or in explorations of differences within censoring authorities concerning what should be banned. Other essays explore effects related to censorship, such as its opposite: the "uncensoring" of salacious poetry once out of its author's control, and the effect on prose styles of cultures which permit press freedom. Censorship is also related to the fabrication of literature (in this case supposed lost works by Shakespeare) in the context of competing political visions in 18th-century England. The more familiar relationship between sexuality and censorship is also explored in essays on Victorian and modern literature. The picture which emerges is of censorship as one part of a broader set of power relationships which constitute literature's interaction with society. Taken as a whole the essays underline an enduring aspect of the British identity.